Social justice in the psychological therapies: Personal values and action

Social justice action for psychologists is ethical, transformative and political. In our recent Handbook of Social Justice in Psychological Therapies (Winter & Charura, 2023) we position social justice as a (sometimes overly!) broad construct, covering equality and equity, oppression, marginalisation, and social action, as well as relational social identity constructs like gender, class, sexuality, social class, disability, age, and so on. 

All these factors are important for psychologists to consider within their work, given what we know about the way in which our context – both global, socio-political, and economic, and home, family and direct community – influences our psychological well-being and functioning, and given our responsibilities to uphold Equality and Human Rights legislation.

In the pieces that follow, we have come together as some of the authors involved in the book to illustrate the personal nature of social justice, highlighting the importance of the interconnection of our personal values and our social action as psychological therapists. Reflexivity (and specifically a politically and intersectionally embedded reflexivity) is paramount.

Each author highlights this interweaving of the personal and political as we wrestle with social justice. Divine Charura begins with a reflection on his experiences as a Black British man of African heritage, and social justice-informed psychological practice tackling racism. Martin Milton then writes about growing up in South Africa, weaving together reflections on racism, sexuality, and developing ideas on social justice and equality. 

Olga Oulanova then considers land acknowledgements and Indigenous perspectives in Canadian psychology teaching. Next, Silva Neves writes about his experience as a gay man, and the importance of sex-positivity in social justice practice. Lynne Gabriel considers her experiences of being othered and working with gender and sexuality. 

Following this, Laura Winter emphasises the importance of cultural humility, and reflects on experiences of privilege and oppression as we personally approach and engage with social justice in psychology. Finally, we conclude with thoughts on the importance, and complexity, of engaging with social justice values in action.

Social justice, challenging racism and taking an anti-racist stance

Divine Charura calls for psychologists to tackle issues head on

As a Black British Man of African heritage I want to contribute some reflections and perspectives on the place for social justice and activism in tackling racism. Following the death of Mr George Floyd, in 2020, there were many responses worldwide about the importance of taking an anti-racist stance, and rightly so. 

In some ways it was sad that it took the witnessing of the murder of this man for societies to rise together and speak, because the reality has been that millions of people from the global majority have been historically killed or impacted by racism.

At the time I wrote a brief article entitled Racial injustice ... Where is the love? A response to present societal responses on the death of George Floyd (Charura, 2020). The article was also a response to psychological professional bodies' statements which, in general, were calling for a radical shift in challenging racial undertones, and all forms of 'isms' that breed discrimination in society and in our professions. 

Four years on, having co-edited the Handbook and witnessed the continued calls for the importance of taking anti-racist stances and decolonising psychology curricula, I feel that it remains important to maintain the social justice commitment to challenge racial undertones, microaggressions and racism within our professions and society.

I have written and argued elsewhere that psychological therapies, as a Western and Eurocentric endeavour, are riddled with and compromised by racism (Charura & Clyburn 2023). Having witnessed and experienced racism in my own life and having worked with diverse communities who are impacted by racism, I argue that if psychotherapy and other psychological professions are going to be fit for our diverse world, then it is important to address racism head on (Charura & Clyburn 2023).

beneficence, autonomy, justice, and fidelity), 'doing no harm' means we cannot ignore, avoid, sidestep or intellectualise the concept of racial trauma (Charura & Al-Murri, in press). Ignoring matters of racial trauma denies the fundamental aspect of an individual's/community's identity, lived experience of oppression, and injustice.

It also perpetuates the oppression of racialised groups. That is because it wrongly locates the problem within the individual, thus reinforcing the dominant narrative of denying the existence of racism, minimising the impact of microaggressions and their prolonged traumatic and weathering impact. We must engage with an intersectional understanding of identity, as it offers a complex and more nuanced exploration and understanding of racism and oppression (Charura & Al-Muri, in press; Newnes, 2021).

I see social justice being effective when we can all join together across our diverse communities, professions and systems to take an anti-racist, anti-discriminatory approach.  It is important that we all join as allies in our different communities to challenge white supremacy, which is one of the social injustice toxins that has infiltrated many communities, thereby perpetuating racism, and underwriting and reproducing systems of racial oppression (Andrews, 2016; Charura & Clyburn, 2023; Gunew, 2007; Nasrat & Riaz 2023; Newnes, 2021). We as professionals and citizens should grapple with how we engage with our own [professional/personal] power and privilege to address inequities, including engaging actively in tackling the roots of racism as one of society's most pernicious problems (Nasrat & Riaz 2023; Paquin et al., 2019).

Furthermore, within the professions, I feel it is important to reiterate what has been said by many others: that the therapy community must commit to anti-racist practice. We need a continued shift and change in psychology/psychological professions curricula to embed diversity training – and, specifically, teaching about the impact of race and racism – in a way that is more than tokenistic. As research is the gateway for evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence which we depend on to inform practice, we need to engage research methods and participatory methodologies that value the voices of marginalised peoples (Charura 2020).

It is important that our commitment to social justice and antiracist practice exemplifies the power of allyship, love, and commitment to human rights (Tribe & Charura 2023) and radical hope (Nasrat & Riaz 2023).

Professor (Dr.) Divine Charura is Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a practitioner psychologist. As a researcher, Divine's work and interests are in psycho-traumatology and mental health across the lifespan and psycho-therapeutic interventions for trauma.

Inequality threatens us all

Martin Milton recalls the roots of his 'desire for a more equal world'

My adolescence was spent in 1970s and 80s South Africa, living through a last desperate thrust of apartheid. We were a white working-class family, struggling at times, while recognising that we had things so much better than millions of others, and not just because my parents worked hard. The system was tipped in our favour. 

South Africa was notoriously intolerant of racial difference⁠, but it also struggled with sexuality and gender. I became aware of the intricacies of systemic racism while resisting the early flutterings of queerness; a confusing time that sensitised me to power and its uses to accept or reject, accept or deny, facilitate or destroy. A desire for a more equal world crystalised, and an engagement with the tensions between equality, equity, freedom and liberation began.

I survived High School in the conservative heartlands of the country and moved to a coastal university – with its emphasis on thinking, protest and objection. Ideas weren't just ideas, but values that people lived. It blows my mind that I never met my sociology professor. Fatima Meer was under house arrest, so graduate students deputised as the state implemented laws limiting how many people could congregate. 

It was scary, but exhilarating. Adrenaline flowed as we watched police vans drive through campus, checking no one gathered in groups of more than three; we danced at an ANC rally, argued in sociology lectures about the meaning of citizenship and different political worldviews – proscribed conversations themselves. (It is important to note that Apartheid cannot simply be reduced to a spontaneous abuse of power by the government of the day. 

That policy was a product of a particular history, including abuse of the Afrikaaner population by Colonial Britain, an experience of racial trauma with long-term, generational effects, a fact often overlooked, conveniently scapegoating one group, minimising the complexity of the issues and letting Britain off, once again, for its damaging historical policies).

Events took a personal turn one morning. I was still drowsy when I heard something that would change my life:

'All immigrant males, between the ages of 15 and 25, who have been in the country for more than five years have today become citizens'.

Wait … what? That's me!

I looked at the radio … had I heard right? I dressed, went downstairs, and checked the newspapers. Yep, I was a citizen now. But… how?

'Are you still British?' friends pondered. I didn't know; it was a while since I'd been in the UK. My friends still called me 'Pom' – did that count?

Come out as gay? Moffie? I'd not fully realised that then, but I'm not sure I would've had the courage to do so even if I had. Everyone knew that didn't 'get you out of it'– conscripts were army property, and they'd rather have you heavily medicated in a locked ward, than 'let you off'.

All roads seemed to lead to honourable, but impossible, outcomes.

So, in my last year of University, I renounced citizenship. Not a difficult process actually, not technically. A lady in her stiff turd-coloured uniform simply said, 'That's fine'. I watched as she stamped 'Cancelled' through my ID book. 'You do know', she added, 'that your permanent residence status is no longer valid? Your student visa expires next year'.

Wait… what?

I left in a daze. How weird it was that Durban's skies were still blue, that cars continued to flow up West Street, and that I had a lecture to get to. The world had changed, but it hadn't – yet.

It was the right decision, but I'd not considered the consequences. Resistance was costly, it meant loss and nomadic exile. I 'lost' my friends, my family, and my career options. I wasn't stateless, of course; I was British with plenty of other privileges too, so I returned to the UK, but it didn't feel like home; I was shocked to see how power and its advantages were – still are – embedded here. 

Not in your face like old SA, but slickly wrapped up in a discourse of generosity and liberalism, the lovely face of nastiness. It feels risky writing this with politicians declaring it's unpatriotic to recognise history, and social media accounts being monitored.

I moved to the US for a while and found it less deceitful than the UK. It was there, working in a psychiatric facility, I started to put two and two together. South Africa wasn't an outlier. Social injustice occurs globally, and I started to see the terrible impact of systemic inequality on people. 

The cancer of inequality has informed my development as a psychologist/psychotherapist ever since, whether seeing the impacts of discriminatory health policy, the problems inherent in packaged therapies, government underfunding of mental health or the (ongoing) mismanagement of the (ongoing) Covid pandemic. Having been there before, seeing flagrant systemic inequality, populist rhetoric and culture wars sends shivers down my spine today; inequality continues to threaten us all.

Martin Milton is a Chartered Psychologist. He was Professor of Counselling Psychology at Regent's University London until his retirement from academia. He maintains a small independent practice in psychotherapy and supervision.

Beyond the Land Acknowledgment

Olga Oulanova on decolonising clinical teaching by making space for indigenous voices

In Canada, many formal gatherings – including University courses and workshops – begin with a land acknowledgement. A territorial or land acknowledgement recognises the traditional territory of the Indigenous peoples who called the land home before the arrival of settlers. A land acknowledgement demonstrates recognition of Indigenous lands and treaties. 

It involves reflecting on what happened in the past and what changes can be made going forward to further the reconciliation process – a renewed relationship with Indigenous peoples based on the recognition of rights, respect and partnership. While this is an important and necessary step, it is insufficient.

In this reflection, I will describe an additional step I have taken to further the reconciliation process and work towards decolonisation of the psychological profession. I do not regard this as the way or the best way, and I acknowledge that there are many possible alternative paths. By sharing my approach and my story, I hope to inspire other educators and clinicians to consider what working towards decolonisation could look like in their own teaching and clinical endeavours.

As a first-generation immigrant to Canada who has settled on traditional Indigenous land, I am deeply committed to decolonising my clinical teaching and psychotherapy practice. This begins, I believe, with critical awareness that Western ways of knowing have dominated psychological theories and therapies. 

When providing services to minoritised clients, these may perpetuate colonial ideas and thereby colonial trauma. Decolonisation, in turn, entails making space for other ways of knowing. These alternative perspectives and voices can challenge the dominant colonial narratives and 'overwrite' problematic colonial stories.

In the Canadian context, I understand decolonising as learning from and allowing myself to be deeply impacted by Indigenous stories and traditional ways of seeing and knowing. But what does this actually look like in practice? I will next describe my efforts towards decolonising the classroom in teaching graduate psychology and psychotherapy students at the University of Toronto, Canada.

invited to consider diverse ways of knowing and reflect on perspectives that may differ from the dominant Western ways of seeing.

I believe literature can offer rich commentary and profound insight on the human condition, suffering and resilience. I hope to instil in students a curiosity about the rich world of Indigenous literatures, encourage them to read broadly, and thus be informed and transformed by Indigenous stories as they embark on their clinical work. 

I invite them to consider whether these stories may offer insights or alternative conceptualisations of presenting issues, or suggest metaphors that could inform treatment. For example, reflecting on the use of humour by Indigenous writers such as Sherman Alexie and Thomas King – whose voices the class heard during the course of the semester – we begin to appreciate the role of humour in healing from intergenerational trauma. 

This, in turn, becomes a vessel to a novel understanding of their Indigenous clients. Rather than regarding humour as avoidance or a defense, students consider 'humour as medicine' and acknowledge its tremendous healing potential.

This practice of making space in the curriculum for other ways of knowing and seeing can be extended to many other settings. Sharing stories of peoples and communities that have been marginalised and kept 'outside the classroom' can begin to challenge dominant ways of thinking and seeing and guide clinical work with individuals from those communities. 

Reading a range of authors and hearing a range of stories from those communities can counter problematic assumptions and help overwrite dominant colonial narratives. In this way, we can collectively challenge – in the words of Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie – a 'single story' of a people.

As therapists, this practice can profoundly inform our clinical work. As educators, we can foster in our students a willingness to be informed and transformed by other ways of knowing and seeing. Collectively, by welcoming voices and stories that have been banished to the margins, we can make space for other ways of knowing that may be unfamiliar, yet can be incredibly rich and transformative.

Olga Oulanova is Assistant Professor in Counselling and Clinical Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. She works in private practice as a Clinical and Rehabilitation Psychologist.

Exploring the landscape of sexuality

Silva Neves takes a social justice stance on sex-positivity and pleasure

I identify as a gay man. I consider the large and diverse Queer communities represented under the Pride flag as 'my people'. One of my important personal values is sex-positivity, which includes pleasure-positivity. As a psychosexual and relationship psychotherapist, my sex-positive and pleasure-positive personal value is an important professional one too. 

Sex-positivity is sometimes misunderstood as thinking 'anything goes', but my understanding of the term is not that at all. For me, sex-positivity means that I do not impose my own ideas and morality about sex and relationships on my clients and other people around me. I very much stand by the phrase 'don't yuk my yum'.

Sex-positivity comes with the specific philosophy of honesty, consent, boundaries, and responsibilities. Indeed, those aspects are different from 'anything goes', and yet, when they are respected, people can feel the full pleasure of sexual freedom in authenticity and safety. As part of my sex-positive value, I believe that sexual pleasure is our human right, and the broader sense of pleasure (sexual and non-sexual) is a key component of our overall mental and physical well-being.

For me, sex-positivity is a social justice value too. In countries and cultures around the world, sex is politicised with ongoing attempts to control it by pathologising and/or criminalising some sexual orientations (i.e., homosexuality), sexual behaviours and sex workers, as well as controlling the bodies and the sexuality of women. I draw on my sex-positive value to challenge heteronormativity, mono-normativity and patriarchy in our society and in the psychology/psychotherapy professions because I want to be of service to those who are marginalised by society.

the topic of pornography is sprinkled with pseudo-science and misinterpretation of research prioritising a moral, religious, sex-negative and pleasure-negative bias.

Most of our literature in relationship therapy is focused on couples therapy and monogamy, continuing the narratives of the mono-normativity imperatives, and sometimes pathologising other types of relationships as anxious or avoidant attachment styles. The lack of knowledge of the diversity of sexual orientations encourages mental health practitioners to pathologise asexuality as 'inhibited sexual desire disorder'. Thankfully, there is also a growing body of literature that challenges heteronormativity and mono-normativity, and helps us be more aware of the large human diversity.

My sex-positive and pleasure-positive values energise me in my ethical duty as a Queer practitioner to help my colleagues and the wider profession to think 'outside the box' about our clinical concepts and interventions that had been previously unquestioned, in the attempt to adapt them to be more culturally relevant to the wider diversity of human beings. 

The awareness of gender, sex, sexuality, erotic and relationship diversities should not only be a topic of 'special populations' on a footnote of core training programmes and textbooks; it should be thoroughly well-integrated into our clinical thinking. I consider it an ethical issue because, as I have explained, heteronormative and mono-normative thinking may significantly harm clients.

In my own life, I extend pleasure-positivity to the wider sense of pleasure: the pleasure of being alive, connecting meaningfully with friends and my family of choice, inviting loved ones to my dinner table and sharing food, laughter and being silly. Prioritising and enjoying those precious here-and-now life pleasures is central to my philosophy. I am very fortunate that my work gives me much pleasure too. There isn't a day that passes without feeling grateful for it all.

Silva Neves is an award-winning COSRT-accredited and UKCP-registered psychosexual and relationship psychotherapist, and a trauma psychotherapist. He is a Pink Therapy Clinical Associate. www.silvaneves.co.uk

Social justice and gender

Lynne Gabriel

As someone who first 'came out' in the early 1980s as a woman in a loving and sexual relationship with another woman, I have since lived through multiple iterations of cultural, social, and societal responses, including antipathy, overt and covert discrimination, and degrees of acceptance. 

Even today, when meeting new contacts, people usually assume I am married to a man when my partner is a woman. Even now, we can still encounter being 'othered'.  Gender work has taken on compelling, complex, and conflicted dimensions, with an increased focus on marginalised gender minorities and, especially more recently, transgendered people.

In sociology and psychology, gender is recognised as a complex psychosocial construct (Levitt, 2019) and in terms of defining the concept, the World Health Organization (2002) describe it as 'characteristics of women and men that are socially constructed, while sex refers to those that are biologically determined. People are born female or male but learn to be girls and boys who grow into women and men. This learned behaviour makes up gender identity and determines gender roles.'

Given the complex and potentially conflicted perspectives on gender, working with it in a therapy context requires reflexive practice on the practitioner's part to navigate, in collaboration with the client, the multifaceted and fluid aspects of human gender identity as encountered in the therapy processes and relationship. This can be challenging. 

I still remember how, back in the late 80s and early 90s, I encountered supervisor concerns about living, working, and socialising in a city where I might see clients when shopping or on an evening out. The same concerns did not extend to heterosexual people, who equally might bump into one another. A case of misunderstanding, double standards, plus inappropriate concerns about the sexual and social practices of LGBT+ people. I was not then, and nor am I now, a sexually rampant lesbian, and I am safe to be around clients.

Consideration of justice for gender is central when working with gender in a therapy context.  Oppression and disenfranchisement can negatively impact people from gender-stigmatised, gender-non-conforming and LGBTQI+ communities. The more intersecting factors and forces there are for people, the more oppressive and limiting it could be for those subjected to them, and the greater the need for practitioners who can facilitate inclusive and collaborative practices.

Fostering an inclusive, inquisitive, and critical inquiry approach provides a fertile context in which factors and experiences can be collaboratively explored in the therapy process and relationship. Core principles, knowledge and practices can guide practitioners who are navigating such complex gendered terrains. 

Gender is a richly diverse aspect of human existence and one that continues to evolve over time, particularly in relation to trans identities and associated societal and political oppression. It is evident that human gender and sexual expression are complex representations of personal and relational preferences and understandings. 

Whilst therapeutic perspectives and approaches will continue to evolve over time, a pluralistic framework for working with gender that advocates case formulation, working with client preferences, collaborative decision making and meta-communication – with an overt vision of challenging injustices and working collaboratively to co-produce therapeutic content and processes – offers an excellent contemporary mindset and framework for working within the complexities of gender. And it's an approach that holds social justice at its core.

Lynne Gabriel, OBE, is Professor of Counselling and Mental Health at York St John University, York, UK. She is a Counsellor and Psychotherapist, and a trained supervisor of practitioners working within the counselling, mental health and helping professions.

Humility and social justice informed practice

Laura Anne Winter has often wondered, 'am I the right person to be doing this?'

I've been researching and writing about social justice in psychology and education since 2010. I have written in the Handbook about my social positioning more than I have done in anything prior to this: it is fundamental to my engagement with social justice values and action in my work. Consistent with how I understand good social justice-informed psychological practice, I need to reflexively examine my own identities and my experiences of power/lessness, solidarity and socially structured dis/advantages.

And here's the thing: quite often in the 14 years I've been working in this area, I've wondered 'am I really the right person to be doing this?', largely because of the many ways in which I benefit from socially structured advantage. This has, on occasion, left me feeling as if I am working in an area which I should not, that I risk speaking for people or perpetuating injustice in the role of 'saviour' without actually changing anything at all.

Systems of academia and higher education prize certainty and knowledge – they also often involve self-publicism and writing/publishing/training involves putting your name to something. I write about social justice for many reasons. I've said before that I initially approached the area with naive good intentions, and without a critical eye to things which I now see as fundamental to good social justice-informed practice.

I have personally benefitted from others' oppression, and recognising the myth of meritocracy means acknowledging that, in part, I occupy the position(s) I do because of my social identity and privilege. I teach at a university; I am a Practitioner Psychologist; I have been involved in publishing academic papers and books. I am able to write about social justice, in part because of my social positioning(s).

But instead of that leaving me with (only) feelings of shame, guilt, sadness, and anger, a position of humility shifts my thinking away from questioning whether I should do this, and towards how should I do this. Indeed, I should – social inequality, oppression and discrimination impact us all, not only those who are themselves marginalised or oppressed. But how I should is an important point to reflect upon. I must be honest about my experiences and remain resistant both to the idea that I am entirely innocent and to the idea that I am solely responsible.

It's also important to highlight, and be aware of the danger of talking about social justice more in psychology:

'Systems of oppression (i.e. white supremacist heterosexist patriarchal capitalism) will predictably co-opt every radical movement toward change, extinguish the radical, change-making components, and popularize an oversimplified, sanitized, feel-good version that allows people to believe change is happening without threatening the oppressive systems' (Wilcox et al., 2024, p.7)

We must be mindful of this and 'be willing to upend the oppressive systems of which we are a part' (Wilcox et al., 2024, p.7).

My students and my experiences as an educator in particular have taught me the importance of humility: sitting with the discomfort of my socially structured advantages, facing in a genuine rather than performative way the multitude of social ills, and I can thank some students and colleagues for calling me out on my blind spots, and my bad/mad/sad times. To genuinely work towards and embrace social justice in psychology, I suggest we need to commit to a position of humility: accountability, honesty, and a resistance to 'the desire to reassure ourselves of our benign innocence' (Aanerud, 2015, p.126).

Dr Laura Anne Winter is a Chartered Psychologist and a Reader in Education and Counselling Psychology at the University of Manchester. She is also the Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion for her school at the University.

What now?

In The Handbook of Social Justice in Psychological Therapies, we point out that social justice action can, and often does, come with risks for the individual(s) or community group who engage in action and activism. This is particularly the case where the individual is minoritised or marginalised themselves and advocating or engaging in social justice work connected to their marginalised identities. 

Social justice does require action, and that action will be about the personal and the political. Reflection on our identities, positioning and values is important as we move forward engaging with social justice as psychological practitioners.

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References

Aanerud, R. (2014). Humility and whiteness. In G. Yancy (Ed.) White self-criticality beyond anti-racism: How does it feel to be a white problem? Lexington books
Charura, D. & Al-Murri, B. (Forthcoming). Racial Trauma. In Y. Ade-Serrano and O. Nkansa-Dwamena (Forthcoming). Embracing Race in Counselling Psychology. Routledge.
Charura, D. & Clyburn S. (2023) Critical race theory: A methodology for research in psychotherapy. In K. Tudor & J. Wyatt (2023) Reflexive Research for Reflective Practice: Qualitative Research Methodologies for Psychotherapy. Routledge. 
Charura D. (2020). Racial injustice ... Where is the love? A response to present societal responses on the death of George Floyd and to the UKCP statement. tinyurl.com/3ana39nt
Hills, J., Christodoulidi, F. & Charura, D. (2023). A Duoethnographic Study of Power and Privilege in the Psychotherapeutic Space: Dialogical Research as Professional Development. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 22.
Gunew, S. (2007). Rethinking whiteness. Feminist Theory, 8(2), 141–147. 
Maharaj, A.S., Bhatt, N.V. & Gentile, J.P. (2021). Bringing it in the room: Addressing the impact of racism on the therapeutic alliance. Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience, 18(7–9), 39–43. 
Nasrat, N. & Riaz, M. (2023). Social Justice informed Therapy and Racially minoritised individuals (pp.77-88). In Winter, L.A. & Charura D. (2023). The Handbook of Social Justice in Psychological Therapies: Power, Politics, Change.  SAGE Publications. 
Newnes, C. (Ed.). (2021). Racism in psychology: Challenging theory, practice and institutions. Routledge. 
Paquin, J.D., Tao, K.W. & Budge, S.L. (2019). Toward a psychotherapy science for all: Conducting ethical and socially just research. Psychotherapy, 56(4), 491–502. 
Tribe, R. & Charura, D. (2023, October). Counselling psychologists working in Human rights & social justice. In Clinical Psychology Forum (Vol. 369). British Psychological Society.
Wilcox, M.M., Pérez-Rojas, A.E., Marks, L.R. et al. (2024). Structural Competencies: Re-Grounding Counseling Psychology in Antiracist and Decolonial Praxis. The Counseling Psychologist.
Winter, L.A. & Charura D. (2023). The Handbook of Social Justice in Psychological Therapies: Power, Politics, Change. SAGE Publications.